Tempestuous

Tonight we (along with AGLA) will be watching Washington Shakespeare Company‘s production of The Tempest, and appropriately enough, dark clouds have gathered and it’s been pouring rain for the last hour or so.

Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had wak’d after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that, when I wak’d,
I cried to dream again. (III.ii)

The Tempest is one of my favorite Shakespeare plays. (I’ve seen and/or read only a handful of them, mostly the major ones on typical high-school reading lists. Sometime last year I bought the complete works of Shakespeare in a single volume, thinking I would re-read the standards and get into the more obscure stuff, but still the book sits patiently on the bookshelf, waiting to be opened.) I’ve seen The Tempest performed once thus far, about ten years ago–was it that long ago?–at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. I was a senior in high school, and our English class went on a two-day field trip to the festival in Ashland, Ore., about 350 miles north of San Francisco. I remember being quite impressed with the production, which was held in festival’s flagship venue, the open-air Elizabethan Theatre. Definitely a perfect play to watch under the stars.

Or with the thunder roaring and rain tap-tapping outside.

[Addendum (23 Aug): There’s an article (“Room and Bard“) about the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in the travel section of Sunday’s Post.]